Kitchen & Bar

On this phone

How to get around

The bar under the name is the map. Swipe it sideways if a destination sits off-screen. On Tonight, the button pinned to the bottom cooks the lead dish.

  1. Tonight — What you can cook first, plus drinks that fit the same shelf.

  2. This week — Five dinners from the shelf, urgent things cooked first.

  3. Shelf — Edit what you actually own.

  4. Written methods — Every dish and drink with a method somebody wrote out.

  5. The pantry — Start from one ingredient: what it does, and everything built on it.

  6. Out of it — What to use instead, judged by the job the missing thing was doing.

  7. Photo review — Review a demo shelf photo and confirm every item before adding it.

  8. Flavor Lab — Pairings with a track record: classic matches and the mixology behind them.

  9. Wild cards — Combinations with no tradition behind them, only shared aroma notes.

  10. Send to Occasion OS — Prepare confirmed shelf availability for Occasion OS.

  11. The field — The gap this layer owns.

Keep it on the home screen

  1. iPhone — tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.
  2. Android — open the browser menu, then Install app or Add to Home screen.

After that it opens as Kitchen & Bar, not a browser tab. Inventory stays on this device.

Substitutions · 91 dishes here use it

Out of ginger

Bright and hot when raw, mellow and warm when cooked. Grated it dissolves into a sauce; sliced it perfumes a liquid and comes back out. Choose by whether you want to taste it or smell it.

Everything below is judged against that job. A swap that covers it is a swap; one that only looks similar is not.

25 of the 91 dishes here that mention ginger list it as optional — 27% of them. In those, the correct substitution is nothing.

What to reach for

Instead · 1

ground ginger

a quarter teaspoon per tablespoon of fresh, grated

What it gets you
The warmth and the smell, and in a bake or a spice mix it is arguably the right ingredient anyway.
What it costs you
The heat and the brightness. Dried ginger is warm where fresh is sharp, so a stir fry loses its edge.

Instead · 2

galangal

one for one

What it gets you
A closely related root doing the same structural job in the same food.
What it costs you
It is more piney and more medicinal. In a Thai curry that is a correction rather than a compromise; in a ginger cookie it is a mistake.

Instead · 3

a spoon of ginger paste or minced jarred ginger

a teaspoon per tablespoon of fresh

What it gets you
Speed, and the flavor comes closer than the dried version does.
What it costs you
Some brightness to the jar, and often citric acid or oil you did not intend to add.

Where you can just leave it out · 25

These dishes list ginger as optional. They were written to work without it, so no ratio is needed and nothing has to be bought.

Where the swap will be tasted · 26

These need it and are short enough that nothing hides: 4 required ingredients or fewer, which makes ginger a quarter of what is in the pan. Make the swap a decision rather than a repair.

Check what else is in the pan

The company ginger keeps in this library, counted off required ingredients. A swap that argues with the top two is the wrong swap, whatever a chart says.

What to make with gingerRank what I can actually cookAll substitutions